Fic; Observations, Ch 45
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
“M’Benga’s feelin’ kinda queasy. I’ll be doing your physical today, Spock.”
“Very well.”
Dr. McCoy was surprisingly efficient. He asked only the necessary questions, conducted the physical in a brisk and timely manner. There were no remarks concerning my physiology, no comments about the hue or temperature or possible reptilian origins of my blood, except to make note that my copper levels were unusually low. The doctor prescribed a mineral supplement, to be consumed at two hour intervals for a period of 50 hours.
“Yah, I know you can do that great healing stuff, but even Vulcan bodies can’t produce what they aint got. You need copper, and unless you have some new way of combining the atoms in your body to make it, you need to take these supplements.”
“Is there any need to modify my diet to ensure that this deficiency does not occur again?”
“Not that I know of. I think your diet’s just fine. Problem is, I don’t know of any food with enough copper to fill a Vulcan’s daily quota. It’s not really feasible for you to munch on nuts all the time. Humans get a lot of the iron in their blood by eating meat, but that’s not an option for you because you’re vegan and iron’s useless. Why don’t Vulcans have this problem?”
“I hypothesize that this deficiency is somehow caused by my mixed heritage. That seems to be the default answer for most things.”
“Maybe among Vulcans, but I’m not so sure. Humans can suffer from iron deficiency, mixed blood or not. My guess is that a lot of Vulcans have copper deficiencies, but they just learn to live with it and cope. It’s not life threatening, to a point.”
“Doctor, it is not unreasonable for us to assume that this is caused by my physiology.”
“It’s not unreasonable to assume that it’s common among Vulcans, too. They aren’t mutually exclusive, ya know. And while you might be used to these direct cause and effect disciplines in science, medicine isn’t like that. There’s five thousand factors working all at once-sometimes one tiny mechanism breaking down stops the whole thing down the line, sometimes multiple organs fail but a person can still go on living. Bodies are funny like that.
“Anyway, I’ll go file this for M’Benga. You’ll have to come back later, since he’ll do all the questions about your meditative cycles. I’m the surgeon, he’s the psychiatrist.”
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
“Stay with me, Nyota, stay with me-Bones!-hey I just called you by your first name so you have to stay with me! To kick my ass or something...”
“Get out of the way, Jim! What the hell happened to her?” the doctor looked at his tricorder. “Chris, get me the adrenaline-”
“We’re losing her signal-“
“Now!”
“Lieutenant, I’ll kill you myself if you don’t stay with us-“
“She’s stabilizing, heartbeat, brainwaves-“
“I want a drip and some electronodes on her right here-“
“Sir, we have the gurney ready-“
“Pham, load her in. Wheel her to the Sickbay and don’t let her sodium and potassium levels spike. I don’t want to risk her seizing, the way these readings are going. Spock, you take the conn, I’ll let you know how she’s doing. Jim, you’re coming with me.”
“But-“
“Shut up and listen to me. I need to know what the hell happened down there to get her this ripped up, and you’re going to fill me in while I prepare for surgery. Got it?”
“Fuck, Leonard! Her heartbeat’s skyrocketed again-“
“Get me four CCs of-“
“Mother Askani! She’s seizing-“
“Bones-“
“I’m not a damn miracle worker, Jim! Take her off the unit, there’s something not right here. Spock, got in and find her.”
I connected to Nyota’s meld points and promptly lost consciousness.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
“Why don’t you want this child?” the doctor asked Eleen.
“I have never wanted it. I have never desired to be wife of Akaar.”
“Alright, I can understand that. But new life is precious thing.”
“Precious? What is precious about it? Every day there are women in the tribe who bear children. Some are strong and live, some are weak and die. It is how it has always been, it is how it will always be. I am the wife of Akaar, and I must die. I do not care if the child inside must die with me. I have done my duty, and I will finish it.”
“Now hold on a minute there. I find it hard to believe that there aren’t any women who are barren, who suffer fertility problems, who want children and can’t have them.”
“There are such women whose wombs are closed. It is their shame that they are unwilling to bear the child of their husband.”
“Unwilling?! It’s not a matter of willing or unwilling! There are some women in this universe who would give anything, anything to have a child.”
“I do not understand.”
“Look, everyone’s born with a different body, and no one’s perfect. Sometimes that body breaks down in ways that even a doctor can’t fix. I’ve seen a lot of women back on my planet go through that kind of sadness. It’s a kind of death, watching that, having to tell them that kind of news. And here you have a perfectly healthy baby boy growing right in you, ready to be born, and you want to go kill it!”
“It is the way of our people, Mac-Coy. I do not fear death.”
“Sure, but you hate this baby so much that you’re scared of life.”
“Our people fear nothing! It is you who fear death, who cannot stand the stench of it. I have seen you, Mac-Coy, your face wild with terror of death.”
The doctor grabbed Eleen and shook her.
“And what’s so great about it?! What’s so great about looking down that dark pit and jumping? I’ve seen men die in ways you can only imagine, and there is nothing great or noble about it! It’s empty and cold and black, there’s no warmth of the body, no fighting, no trying. Only a corpse, a cadaver, the decay of cells and the rot.
“Do you know how rare life is in this universe? Do you? There are a million ways to die, and I’ve seen about half of ‘em. But there’s only one way to live.”
“Doctor, if you desire to persuade the lady, she may be more willing to listen if you lowered your voice.”
Dr. McCoy scowled at me. He turned his attention back to Eleen, voice tired but soft.
“At least give your little boy there a chance. Besides,” he said with a grim smile, “you might not even survive through labor. I’ve got nothing to help you out except my brain and two hands.”
Both the mother and child survived the ordeal. Eleen named her son after the doctor, calling him Mac-Coy Leonard Akaar.
The doctor was insufferably pleased with himself for several shifts.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learned, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
“Bones. Bones.”
I tried to lead the captain away from the Sickbay, as Dr. McCoy clearly desired solitude, possibly with a bottle of his favorite brand of bourbon. I was not successful in distracting the captain.
“Don’t say it, Jim.”
“There was nothing you could do. You tried everything. Coriolia just didn’t want to hang on.”
“Damn waste of a life.”
“It’s probably not so bad, you know. Death and all.”
“Don’t get started on that.”
“Hey, you’re a doctor. You had to accept that-“
“Want to know why my wife divorced me? Handed me my ass and told me to pack it?”
“Um, not really. I just assumed she was a bitch to dump you like that.”
As empathetic as the captain is, his tactlessness knows no bounds.
“I loved her once you know. Probably still do. She loved me.”
“Well you wouldn’ta gotten married if you didn’t love each other at some point.”
“We got married during my residency. I worked the emergency room, saw a lot of trauma. Though I have to say, you’ve done some stuff to yourself that I’ve aint never seen in my whole career down in that hospital.”
The doctor’s accent thickened considerably. He poured himself a glass of bourbon and drained the contents.
“You think you aint got time. Try holding together the guts of a man while he’s screaming for his goddamn mother, and you’re telling him it’s just a scratch while the nurse is fucking up the glue that’s supposed to put his innards together and the anesthesiologist can’t sedate him fast enough and blood is spilling out of every tube the guy’s got.”
The doctor poured himself another glass. His hands were steady.
“And Jill, I guess I never had time for her neither. What, between the crazy shifts at the hospital and me always tryin’ to develop crazy new surgical techniques, there was no way. She thought that when we had Joanna, I’d be at home more, that we’d be a family. I tried, honest to God I really did, but even Joanna wasn’t enough to keep me away from that hospital.
“But I loved them. I still loved them more’n they’ll know and it was a damn surprise to me when Jill slammed the divorce papers in my face and left me with nothing. Not even goddamn custody rights.”
“So screw them. You don’t need them.”
“Captain-“ I warned.
Dr. McCoy sighed and scrubbed at his face. “Jim, this aint something you’re gonna understand. You’re an orphan, been that way for a while. No friends, no family, no connections that tie you down. Me, other folks, well, things work differently. We can’t just up and burn bridges because we’re young and reckless.
“I hate to sound like some old man, but maybe when you’re older, you’ll get it. A man can get royally screwed and still love the people who did it ta him.”
“No. She didn’t respect what you do, she didn’t understand what drives you, and when she finally found out, she decided to ditch you for it!”
“I married her. A wife’s entitled to some time with her husband. Daughter’s entitled to have a daddy that’s around to see her grow. I couldn’t give that,” the doctor laughed bitterly. “Like I couldn’t give Lt. Coriolias a reason to stick around.”
“That’s not your responsibility.”
“I know. That don’t change how it feels though.”
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
“You talk like a hick when you’re drunk.”
“That’s okay, because you always sound like an idiot. I can be magnanimous.”
“Magnanimous? Have you be hanging out with Spock and picking upon his humongous vocabulary?”
“The doctor and I are currently working on a project, along with one of the engineers on board. The doctor would like to make some improvements to the tricorders.”
“Just because we aren’t all baby prodigy captains doesn’t mean we don’t know Federation Standard. I actually graduated from all my damn schools, instead of getting pushed through the fast track by old man Pike.”
“But you never say words like ‘magnanimous.’”
“I was not aware that you closely monitored the doctor’s speech patterns, captain.”
“Will you cut that out, Spock? For God’s sakes, it’s always The Doctor for me and The Captain for Jim. It won’t kill your Vulcan brain to use our names. Leonard.”
“Bones.”
“I only put up with that from you because you won’t quit it. Damnit, man, do you think of us as The Doctor and The Captain?”
“I see no reason why this practice is objectionable.”
Dr. McCoy snorted. “We’re your friends, Spock. You know what that means, or is it too emotional for you? Familiars, comrades, compatriots-“
“Buddies.”
“Jesus, Jim, what kind of a juvenile vocabulary do you have? Do you even know how to read?”
“Of course I know to read! You were the one that said I was a prodigy.”
“Yeah, a prodigy with the lexis of a four year old.”
“Shit, where do you get these words? Lexis?”
“You may be able to gather from context that it means-“
“Vocab, yeah, I know. I’m not an idiot, Spock.”
The doctor and I gave the captain similar looks of skepticism.
“Look, maybe you guys have time to read the fucking dictionary, but I sure as hell don’t. People understand what I’m trying to say-“
“People understand what I’m trying to say most of the time,” he corrected, “so I’m just fine keeping my lexis the way it is.”
There was a pause.
“At least I don’t sound like a hick,” the captain added lamely.
“Unbelievable.”
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Annotations
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
“M’Benga’s feelin’ kinda queasy. I’ll be doing your physical today, Spock.”
“Very well.”
Dr. McCoy was surprisingly efficient. He asked only the necessary questions, conducted the physical in a brisk and timely manner. There were no remarks concerning my physiology, no comments about the hue or temperature or possible reptilian origins of my blood, except to make note that my copper levels were unusually low. The doctor prescribed a mineral supplement, to be consumed at two hour intervals for a period of 50 hours.
“Yah, I know you can do that great healing stuff, but even Vulcan bodies can’t produce what they aint got. You need copper, and unless you have some new way of combining the atoms in your body to make it, you need to take these supplements.”
“Is there any need to modify my diet to ensure that this deficiency does not occur again?”
“Not that I know of. I think your diet’s just fine. Problem is, I don’t know of any food with enough copper to fill a Vulcan’s daily quota. It’s not really feasible for you to munch on nuts all the time. Humans get a lot of the iron in their blood by eating meat, but that’s not an option for you because you’re vegan and iron’s useless. Why don’t Vulcans have this problem?”
“I hypothesize that this deficiency is somehow caused by my mixed heritage. That seems to be the default answer for most things.”
“Maybe among Vulcans, but I’m not so sure. Humans can suffer from iron deficiency, mixed blood or not. My guess is that a lot of Vulcans have copper deficiencies, but they just learn to live with it and cope. It’s not life threatening, to a point.”
“Doctor, it is not unreasonable for us to assume that this is caused by my physiology.”
“It’s not unreasonable to assume that it’s common among Vulcans, too. They aren’t mutually exclusive, ya know. And while you might be used to these direct cause and effect disciplines in science, medicine isn’t like that. There’s five thousand factors working all at once-sometimes one tiny mechanism breaking down stops the whole thing down the line, sometimes multiple organs fail but a person can still go on living. Bodies are funny like that.
“Anyway, I’ll go file this for M’Benga. You’ll have to come back later, since he’ll do all the questions about your meditative cycles. I’m the surgeon, he’s the psychiatrist.”
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
“Stay with me, Nyota, stay with me-Bones!-hey I just called you by your first name so you have to stay with me! To kick my ass or something...”
“Get out of the way, Jim! What the hell happened to her?” the doctor looked at his tricorder. “Chris, get me the adrenaline-”
“We’re losing her signal-“
“Now!”
“Lieutenant, I’ll kill you myself if you don’t stay with us-“
“She’s stabilizing, heartbeat, brainwaves-“
“I want a drip and some electronodes on her right here-“
“Sir, we have the gurney ready-“
“Pham, load her in. Wheel her to the Sickbay and don’t let her sodium and potassium levels spike. I don’t want to risk her seizing, the way these readings are going. Spock, you take the conn, I’ll let you know how she’s doing. Jim, you’re coming with me.”
“But-“
“Shut up and listen to me. I need to know what the hell happened down there to get her this ripped up, and you’re going to fill me in while I prepare for surgery. Got it?”
“Fuck, Leonard! Her heartbeat’s skyrocketed again-“
“Get me four CCs of-“
“Mother Askani! She’s seizing-“
“Bones-“
“I’m not a damn miracle worker, Jim! Take her off the unit, there’s something not right here. Spock, got in and find her.”
I connected to Nyota’s meld points and promptly lost consciousness.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
“Why don’t you want this child?” the doctor asked Eleen.
“I have never wanted it. I have never desired to be wife of Akaar.”
“Alright, I can understand that. But new life is precious thing.”
“Precious? What is precious about it? Every day there are women in the tribe who bear children. Some are strong and live, some are weak and die. It is how it has always been, it is how it will always be. I am the wife of Akaar, and I must die. I do not care if the child inside must die with me. I have done my duty, and I will finish it.”
“Now hold on a minute there. I find it hard to believe that there aren’t any women who are barren, who suffer fertility problems, who want children and can’t have them.”
“There are such women whose wombs are closed. It is their shame that they are unwilling to bear the child of their husband.”
“Unwilling?! It’s not a matter of willing or unwilling! There are some women in this universe who would give anything, anything to have a child.”
“I do not understand.”
“Look, everyone’s born with a different body, and no one’s perfect. Sometimes that body breaks down in ways that even a doctor can’t fix. I’ve seen a lot of women back on my planet go through that kind of sadness. It’s a kind of death, watching that, having to tell them that kind of news. And here you have a perfectly healthy baby boy growing right in you, ready to be born, and you want to go kill it!”
“It is the way of our people, Mac-Coy. I do not fear death.”
“Sure, but you hate this baby so much that you’re scared of life.”
“Our people fear nothing! It is you who fear death, who cannot stand the stench of it. I have seen you, Mac-Coy, your face wild with terror of death.”
The doctor grabbed Eleen and shook her.
“And what’s so great about it?! What’s so great about looking down that dark pit and jumping? I’ve seen men die in ways you can only imagine, and there is nothing great or noble about it! It’s empty and cold and black, there’s no warmth of the body, no fighting, no trying. Only a corpse, a cadaver, the decay of cells and the rot.
“Do you know how rare life is in this universe? Do you? There are a million ways to die, and I’ve seen about half of ‘em. But there’s only one way to live.”
“Doctor, if you desire to persuade the lady, she may be more willing to listen if you lowered your voice.”
Dr. McCoy scowled at me. He turned his attention back to Eleen, voice tired but soft.
“At least give your little boy there a chance. Besides,” he said with a grim smile, “you might not even survive through labor. I’ve got nothing to help you out except my brain and two hands.”
Both the mother and child survived the ordeal. Eleen named her son after the doctor, calling him Mac-Coy Leonard Akaar.
The doctor was insufferably pleased with himself for several shifts.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learned, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
“Bones. Bones.”
I tried to lead the captain away from the Sickbay, as Dr. McCoy clearly desired solitude, possibly with a bottle of his favorite brand of bourbon. I was not successful in distracting the captain.
“Don’t say it, Jim.”
“There was nothing you could do. You tried everything. Coriolia just didn’t want to hang on.”
“Damn waste of a life.”
“It’s probably not so bad, you know. Death and all.”
“Don’t get started on that.”
“Hey, you’re a doctor. You had to accept that-“
“Want to know why my wife divorced me? Handed me my ass and told me to pack it?”
“Um, not really. I just assumed she was a bitch to dump you like that.”
As empathetic as the captain is, his tactlessness knows no bounds.
“I loved her once you know. Probably still do. She loved me.”
“Well you wouldn’ta gotten married if you didn’t love each other at some point.”
“We got married during my residency. I worked the emergency room, saw a lot of trauma. Though I have to say, you’ve done some stuff to yourself that I’ve aint never seen in my whole career down in that hospital.”
The doctor’s accent thickened considerably. He poured himself a glass of bourbon and drained the contents.
“You think you aint got time. Try holding together the guts of a man while he’s screaming for his goddamn mother, and you’re telling him it’s just a scratch while the nurse is fucking up the glue that’s supposed to put his innards together and the anesthesiologist can’t sedate him fast enough and blood is spilling out of every tube the guy’s got.”
The doctor poured himself another glass. His hands were steady.
“And Jill, I guess I never had time for her neither. What, between the crazy shifts at the hospital and me always tryin’ to develop crazy new surgical techniques, there was no way. She thought that when we had Joanna, I’d be at home more, that we’d be a family. I tried, honest to God I really did, but even Joanna wasn’t enough to keep me away from that hospital.
“But I loved them. I still loved them more’n they’ll know and it was a damn surprise to me when Jill slammed the divorce papers in my face and left me with nothing. Not even goddamn custody rights.”
“So screw them. You don’t need them.”
“Captain-“ I warned.
Dr. McCoy sighed and scrubbed at his face. “Jim, this aint something you’re gonna understand. You’re an orphan, been that way for a while. No friends, no family, no connections that tie you down. Me, other folks, well, things work differently. We can’t just up and burn bridges because we’re young and reckless.
“I hate to sound like some old man, but maybe when you’re older, you’ll get it. A man can get royally screwed and still love the people who did it ta him.”
“No. She didn’t respect what you do, she didn’t understand what drives you, and when she finally found out, she decided to ditch you for it!”
“I married her. A wife’s entitled to some time with her husband. Daughter’s entitled to have a daddy that’s around to see her grow. I couldn’t give that,” the doctor laughed bitterly. “Like I couldn’t give Lt. Coriolias a reason to stick around.”
“That’s not your responsibility.”
“I know. That don’t change how it feels though.”
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
“You talk like a hick when you’re drunk.”
“That’s okay, because you always sound like an idiot. I can be magnanimous.”
“Magnanimous? Have you be hanging out with Spock and picking upon his humongous vocabulary?”
“The doctor and I are currently working on a project, along with one of the engineers on board. The doctor would like to make some improvements to the tricorders.”
“Just because we aren’t all baby prodigy captains doesn’t mean we don’t know Federation Standard. I actually graduated from all my damn schools, instead of getting pushed through the fast track by old man Pike.”
“But you never say words like ‘magnanimous.’”
“I was not aware that you closely monitored the doctor’s speech patterns, captain.”
“Will you cut that out, Spock? For God’s sakes, it’s always The Doctor for me and The Captain for Jim. It won’t kill your Vulcan brain to use our names. Leonard.”
“Bones.”
“I only put up with that from you because you won’t quit it. Damnit, man, do you think of us as The Doctor and The Captain?”
“I see no reason why this practice is objectionable.”
Dr. McCoy snorted. “We’re your friends, Spock. You know what that means, or is it too emotional for you? Familiars, comrades, compatriots-“
“Buddies.”
“Jesus, Jim, what kind of a juvenile vocabulary do you have? Do you even know how to read?”
“Of course I know to read! You were the one that said I was a prodigy.”
“Yeah, a prodigy with the lexis of a four year old.”
“Shit, where do you get these words? Lexis?”
“You may be able to gather from context that it means-“
“Vocab, yeah, I know. I’m not an idiot, Spock.”
The doctor and I gave the captain similar looks of skepticism.
“Look, maybe you guys have time to read the fucking dictionary, but I sure as hell don’t. People understand what I’m trying to say-“
“People understand what I’m trying to say most of the time,” he corrected, “so I’m just fine keeping my lexis the way it is.”
There was a pause.
“At least I don’t sound like a hick,” the captain added lamely.
“Unbelievable.”
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Annotations